“Do it,” I push.
“No.”
“Yes!” I grab hold of his patch and am about to yank it off in my rage when he catches my wrists. The next thing I know, he knocks my legs out from under me and hauls me over his shoulder. My wrists in one hand, the other arm wrapped around my thighs. He stalks down the hallway with me across his shoulders. I can hear a drill going but before I can see where it’s coming from, he opens another door and dumps me on a bed. Then he’s on top of me, his weight crushing my lungs making it impossible to breathe.
“Don’t do that. Don’t ever fucking do that. Am I fucking clear?”
“Why? Are you afraid I’ll see you for what you are?”
A moment passes between us, strange and fraught with an edge of danger and something else. Something dark. After the pause he releases my wrists to stretch my arms out to the sides.
“Am I fucking clear?” he asks, voice low. When I don’t answer right away, he continues. “I’m being patient with you, Mara.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
We’re so close, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’m panting. Worn out. And he’s breathing heavy, gaze searching my face, falling on my mouth.
I lick my lips because for a moment, I think the strangest thing.
I think he’s going to kiss me.
The room goes dead silent, even the drilling has stopped. But after an eternity, he leans away.
I blink, remember myself as my face flushes with heat. Does he know what I was thinking? Did he read my mind again?
“Fuck,” he mutters, looking away, shaking his head as he releases my arms, starts to lift his weight from me.
But then everything changes.
Because that’s when I feel it. Feel him.
He must know the instant I do because he shifts his gaze away and clears his throat, climbing off the bed. He stands, scrubs his face and I sit up. Before he can turn away, I see it. The erection he wants to hide.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says almost hoarsely. “Christ. It’s the last fucking thing I want.”
I get to my feet. Watching as he adjusts himself before turning back to me. He knows I know. He must.
“You’re like him. Just like him.”
He’s quiet for a very long moment, studying me intently before he answers. “I’m not like him.”
“I felt you.”
His jaw clenches.
“You may say you don’t want to fight me, but you got hard doing it. So how are you different?” I ask, not looking away.
“Mara—”
I step toward him close enough that we’re almost touching. “Tell me how you’re different,” I hiss.
His jaw tightens, gaze hardens. “Tell me something first. What would he do now? Petrov.”
I press my lips together.
“Comfort you?”
I don’t bother to answer. He knows anyway.
“Tell me. Is that what he’d do? Because I don’t think so. I think he’d hurt you.”
“Stop.”
“And I don’t think he’d just use his hands. I’ve seen the marks, Mara.”
Shame washes through me. “I said stop.”
“And he wouldn’t stop there, would he? Wouldn’t stop at hitting you.”
“Shut up!” I scream, taking a step away only to have him take a matching one toward me.
“He’d touch you.”
I feel my face crumple and cover it with my hands, trying to rub away emotions I haven’t let myself feel in so long.
“Hurt you in every way.”
I turn to run away but he catches my arm and spins me to face him, backing me into the wall. He sets one big hand against my belly to keep me there.
“Understand one thing,” he starts, leaning his face down to mine. When I try to look away, he leans in closer. “I am not him. I am nothing like him. Don’t ever accuse me of being like him.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and wrap my arms around myself when I begin to tremble with a cold that’s so deep inside me I’m afraid I’ll never get warm again.
“Just let me go,” I try, my voice coming out weak.
“No,” he says and there’s that look again. The same one from yesterday. But I was wrong. It’s not pity. It’s more. And it’s harder to look at. “I won’t let you go, Mara. That’s the point.”
I search his face, shake my head.
He looks at me straight on and I can see the broken side of his face, the two deep crisscrossing gashes. I think he’s letting me look.
“Dante didn’t look like you,” I say. My words wound him. I see it. He turns his head a little, so I only see the good side again. “Why are you lying to me? Telling me you’re him?” A tear slides down my cheek.
He watches it fall as if transfixed, then wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.
“Why?” I ask again.
“I’m not lying to you, and you know it.” His voice is quieter. Darker. “They told you you were Elizabeth because they thought they’d taken Elizabeth. They were supposed to have taken her.”
More tears flow from my eyes.
“Then when they realized their mistake, they told you that you had to be Elizabeth.”
I bring my hands to my face to wipe away the tears that won’t stop falling. I shake my head. “It’s not true.” But it is true. I remember them arguing in the very beginning. When I wouldn’t stop crying. When they realized what I was saying was that I wasn’t Lizzie.
I don’t want to remember this. I can’t.
He reaches out, brushes my hair back and when I meet his gaze something strange passes between us. His fingers make contact with my face as he wipes away more tears and there are those sensations like before. Strangely, I find myself wanting his touch. His hands on me. Something I’ve never wanted before. Something I never thought I could want. And when he pulls me to his chest, I don’t fight him. I just let him hold me for a long, long time, feel him kiss the top of my head, strong arms keeping me to him.
“I won’t hurt you, Mara. And I won’t let anyone else hurt you again.”
I want to wrap my arms around him. Let him carry me, give in to him. Give myself over because he is so much stronger than me. Maybe he can take the weight, the mess of the last fifteen years.
But he pulls away too quickly and I’m left feeling cold again. I wrap my arms around myself once more.
Alone.
Always alone.
And besides you can’t just give away fifteen years. Hand it over like it’s a coat you take off.
“I was off the island that night,” he says, drawing me out of myself. It sounds like a confession. Like something heavy inside him. “I’d snuck out for a girl. But that was all planned. So that bastard could murder my family. We thought you’d died. We just assumed they’d gotten rid of your body. It took Cristiano years to get better. And he was different after. Until Scarlett, at least.” I watch as he tells his story. “It was Noah who recognized you from a picture in Lizzie’s room. He remembered you.”
“Noah?”
He nods.
In the rags of my memory is a little boy named Noah. But that was a very, very long time ago. I remember that he was kind to me.